Advertising & Conditioning

Role of advertising and conditioning Advertisement plays a significant role in the inspiration for ‘Brave New World’ and a number of the key ideas and core concepts in the novel. Conditioning is significant in many of the ideas in the novel and many of the events which take place in the story can be tied to the role of conditioning in the dystopian society.

Advertisement The advertisement industry and amount of advertisement in society grew rapidly in the 1920s and 30s. Society was becoming more disposable as the post-war economy was strong. This provided some inspiration for sections of ‘Brave New World’: “Ending is better than mending.” Trust was placed in unproven scientific claims (cigarettes, alcohol and health products in particular) – both ‘Brave New World’ and ‘1984’ reflect elements of this. Advertising or Propaganda? (‘1984’)

1920s Advertisements Various advertisements made spurious scientific claims despite having biased or sometimes no research to support them.

Advertisement “I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement.... It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.” Aldous Huxley

Conditioning The control of a behavioural response to a stimulus. Ivan Pavlov’s investigations into classical conditioning. Salivation of dogs as a response to auditory stimulus.

In ‘Brave New World’ People are conditioned from birth into one of five castes (alpha, beta, gamma, delta & epsilon). Hypnopaedic sleep conditioning of children forces them to learn phrases. Referred to as Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning. Allowed for complete manipulation and control by the state through loss of will and independent thought

In ‘Brave New World’ “For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopaedia.” “The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.” “Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth.” “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.”

Sakhalin Island

Sakhalin Japan first to discover and colonise Russo-Japanese rivalry Russo-Japanese war

Sakhalin Treaty of Portsmouth Island divided between Russia and Japan Second World War

Exile – Link to ‘Brave New World’ A place where sentences of hard labour or exile were served by criminals from 1869 and by participants More than 30,000 persons were sent to Sakhalin Island during the time that the forced-labor colony existed there. Of the 54 revolutionaries sent to the island, 39 were sentenced to various terms at hard labor and the rest to enforced residence in exile.

Links into ‘Brave New World’ Chapter 16 Exile to the Falkland Islands People who didn’t fit into the World State community